"Damn it!"
The scattered chunks of flesh that had been fleeing in all directions suddenly gathered again. They blocked Mukuro's view of the main body, fused together, then split apart once more. This time, they turned into countless tiny copies of Mahito, all identical and extremely small.
Then they started running again.
But with their numbers sharply reduced, and their forms now humanoid, their movement became much faster and cleaner.
Run.
That was the only thought left in Mahito's mind.
What a joke. So much for Heavenly Restriction. That man could no longer be called human at all.
BOOM!
Seeing that the curse was still trying to escape in such a stupid way, Mukuro casually tossed the dagger into the air. Then he lightly stepped on the ground with his right foot.
With a deafening blast, spiderweb-like cracks spread outward from beneath him, the radius exceeding ten meters.
At the same time, countless chunks of shattered rock shot into the air. Along with them, the tiny Mahitos that were desperately trying to flee were also blasted upward.
Even the real body was caught in it.
'This monster… he's doing this with pure force…'
Mahito's eyes trembled as he twisted his body in midair, trying to land as fast as possible.
Otherwise, they would all become living targets.
He had to escape before his soul reached its limit.
"It doesn't matter which piece you're hiding in. I don't need to look. When you can't take it anymore, you'll come out on your own."
The dagger falling from the sky slowly lengthened. When it returned to Mukuro's hand, it had become a jet-black, long and slender sword, wrapped in the aura of the Deva Path.
The blade flashed again and again. The Mahitos that had just landed had their heads sliced off one after another. They fell to the ground and vanished.
They ran fast, but the blade was faster.
"Pff!"
At last, Mahito could not endure it anymore. The one that carried his true consciousness began bleeding heavily from the eyes and nose. Blood spilled all over the ground.
These tiny clones were all parts of his soul. Each time Mukuro destroyed one, he suffered the pain of part of his soul being torn apart.
If this continued, he would die on the road while trying to escape.
"Can't take it anymore?"
At the sight of his miserable state, Mukuro stopped.
The remaining clones gathered again and reformed into Mahito's original shape. But now he was missing two arms and one leg. His body looked like it was about to split apart along the seams. He was no different from a broken lump of flesh barely held together.
He lay half-collapsed beneath a tree, staring at Mukuro with eyes filled with hatred as his lost limbs slowly began to regenerate.
On the surface, it looked like he was recovering. In reality, the damage to his soul was far worse than he had imagined.
The regrown limbs were just forced constructs, shaping the soul so the body looked complete. Even if he started resting right now, it would take at least half a month to recover.
The real problem was whether he could survive today at all.
By now, the sun had almost completely set, and darkness crept across the land.
"The binding vow should have said it, right?" Mahito asked unwillingly, turning his gaze toward Kokichi. "Before the deal ended, you weren't allowed to tell anyone about us. Aren't you afraid of being cursed for doing this?"
Mukuro's timing was far too perfect. And judging by how relaxed he looked, anyone with a brain could guess he had arrived long ago.
He might have been watching from the start, like a cat playing with a mouse.
"That's true," Kokichi replied without hesitation, as if he had expected the question. "Which is why I didn't break it. I never told anyone about our deal."
In truth, he had not planned for this either.
Because of the vow, he could not tell anyone about his cooperation with curses. Until one day, shortly after Sukuna's finger was stolen, the owl that represented Mukuro appeared at the location of his real body in the Kyoto school.
It did nothing. It simply stayed in a corner, quietly waiting.
At that moment, Kokichi understood. Mukuro knew everything, yet chose to do nothing. That was him giving Kokichi a chance to atone, and it was also him casting a long line to catch a big fish.
"What… did you say?!"
That sentence became the final straw that crushed Mahito's mind.
He had believed that leaking information would bring terrible consequences, even death. But now he was being told that Kokichi would bear nothing at all, while he himself might die here.
"Any last words? Or do you think stalling for time to recover will let you beat me? Or maybe you think you can still escape?"
Mukuro stood right in front of him, without the slightest caution. He saw straight through Mahito's intentions.
'Imagine it… that strike back then…'
A powerful enemy right before him. With such overwhelming strength, if he did not evolve again right now, he would not even be qualified to touch the man's clothes.
Mahito's eyes turned bloodshot.
In his mind, a scene replayed again and again. One month ago, Nanami's strike that had nearly killed him, forcing him to collapse his domain and flee.
The space twisted by cursed energy. The blow wrapped in black and red lightning.
In that instant, speed, force, every detail expanded in his mind. He remembered the old man mentioning it later. It was called Black Flash.
"Black Flash!"
His terrifying learning ability, enough to crush countless geniuses, allowed him to grasp its essence after experiencing it once and hearing some explanations.
When Mukuro was less than a meter away, Mahito gambled everything.
He leaped up and threw all his strength into a single punch.
Boom!
Space twisted under his fist.
Black Flash, a technique that made even elites of the jujutsu world step back in fear, was unleashed by a curse that had been born not long ago.
The shockwave exploded outward, whipping up violent winds.
"You've got to be kidding…"
After landing a Black Flash, the user would enter a strange state. Cursed energy recovery and understanding of techniques would both rise.
Yet even in that moment, Mahito froze in disbelief and terror.
Because the Black Flash punch, capable of releasing power at 2.5 times its normal strength, was being casually held in Mukuro's palm with one hand.
"Come on. That was pretty good. Get a little stronger. Before you die, could you let me enjoy crushing you even more?"
That desperate, all-out strike earned him nothing more than a careless compliment.
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